Cyber Hate Speech. On Shaping the Public Agenda by Assembling Contentious Issues

This chapter aims to clarify the discursive dynamics of hate speech (hereafter HS) and its conflict dynamics when mediated by the media. This analysis is based on the dual assumption that online HS is no different from analogous forms of expression in the real world, and that legitimacy, not legality, is the space that the media shape per excellence. The first section attempts to chart a course through the interdisciplinary thicket of HS research and debate. After focusing on the link between language and passions in Aristotle, his notion of ‘civic emotions’ is used as a methodological guide to discuss the linguistic, legal and political aspects of the contemporary debate. Since this framework cannot simply be applied to the conditions of communication in today’s globalised world, the second section introduces HS as a question of public communication, before analysing the production and distribution of contentious issues in and by the media.